In recent years copyright law in the U.S. has become seriously confused and abused by many of the very institutions charged with protecting our artistic treasures. Works created over 100 years ago are supposed to be considered “in the public domain” but in a slight of hand that only lawyers could come up with, many museums, galleries and artists’ estates have insisted and successfully litigated for copyright protection based on the fact that you are using their PHOTOGRAPH of the painting that is in the public domain. This has has turned the concept of public domain images into a copyright catch-22.

It’s refreshing then to see Wikipedia post this statement of policy with images they show:

The official position taken by the Wikimedia Foundation is that “faithful reproductions of two-dimensional public domain works of art are public domain, and that claims to the contrary represent an assault on the very concept of a public domain”.